Why I Quit Low-Fat

Many people who knew me during the 1990s are surprised that today I no longer recommend low fat diets. Indeed, during the whole of that decade and well into the first few years of the new millennium I was a staunch advocate for dietary fat reduction both as a means for achieving long-term weight loss and for general human health.

Before I talk about what changed my mind, I want to mention what did not. Namely, the Atkins diet did not change my views on low-fat diets. The problem, for me, with the Atkins diet at the time (late 1990s) was that it was a fad and not a scientific breakthrough. Sure, people who followed that diet lost weight, but then people who follow almost any diet lose weight and I believed then as I do now that very low carbohydrate diets are more a gimmick than a sustainable lifestyle. On the other hand, I must admit that low-carb diets, Atkins in particular, paved the way towards a fresh examination of nutrition science that opened-up a field that had grown pretty dogmatic and ossified. And from that opening emerged the principles that I now teach.

The science that changed my mind about diet included the following:

The role of carbohydrate in insulin resistance

The role of hormone resistance in appetite derangement (insulin, leptin and others)

The role of chronic inflammation in obesity through hormone resistance

The special role of fructose in leptin and insulin resistance

The connection between gut bacteria (firmicutes/bacteroides ratio) and inflammation and obesity

The role of omega-3 fatty acids (and other fats) as anti-inflammatory agents

It's not that I believe that low fat diets are harmful but that in light of the issues cited above, they miss the mark in two ways: first that they tend to be (but don't have to be) high-glycemic and high sugar and second, that they tend to be far too low in omega-3 and other essential fats. More concretely, they just aren't as healthy or effective or easy as the sort-of modified paleolithic-cum-Mediterranean diet that I now teach.

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